STOCKHOLM, Sept 25 (Reuters) - Vienna-based advocacy group NOYB on Wednesday said it has filed a complaint with the Austrian data protection authority against Mozilla accusing the Firefox browser maker of tracking user behaviour on websites without consent.
NOYB (None Of Your Business), the digital rights group founded by privacy activist Max Schrems, said Mozilla has enabled a so-called “privacy preserving attribution” feature that turned the browser into a tracking tool for websites without directly telling its users.
Mozilla had defended the feature, saying it wanted to help websites understand how their ads perform without collecting data about individual people. By offering what it called a non-invasive alternative to cross-site tracking, it hoped to significantly reduce collecting individual information.
Nah. Turning that feature on by default already set in stone for me their willingness to test the waters. If you don’t think auto-enabling anti-privacy features is a problem I don’t know what to tell you. It may be “small” right now, but just wait and see what else they will try to sneak in.
Use Librewolf and Mull instead.
I use Mull on my phone. Haven’t gotten around to playing with Librewolf but it is on my list of things to do.
I don’t consider the addition to be an anti-privacy feature however. I’d like to see someone change my mind about that.
Any company that is willing to enable options (such as advertising) without users permission/consent is anti privacy. While it may not be a big deal for you now, wait to see what else they try to explain away. You act as if ublock is just automatically installed for users, thus making this not a big deal. what about the thousands if not millions of users on default firefox? The fact that Mozilla did this without letting the user know it is on by default, is inherently anti privacy. Hell I would argue turning it on by default is inherently anti privacy. Especially when they try to explain it away on reddit when they faced backlash. “There has to be a reason our users are upset? Am I the bad guy? No it’s the users who are bad!” It is a reminder that no company is your friend. This is a test to see what they can and cannot get away with. A test to see if the users notice/if enough would really jump ship to create an impact on their product.
I jumped ship as soon as this feature was found. Fuck that.
Librewolf is fantastic, it’s FOSS Firefox. I have had absolutley no issues getting firefox extensions to work with librewolf.
You seem to have misunderstood what i said. You fail to address the actual concept i refer to and the attitude with which you do this is not productive. it’s insulting, assumptive and hostile.
are you sure you read my comment correctly? you spouted off about tangential issues in what appears to me, a sort of wild rage. you make an accusation and assumptions about me and how i act. you trash mozillas reaction to the outcry of their addition. you speculate a conspiracy theory about mozilla only trying to get away with stuff and hypothesize about them being ignorant and clueless.
i get it, you have strong feelings about privacy. you now hate mozilla for thier treachery. this was the final straw that made you jump ship. i’m glad you quickly found a browser that works for you. thanks for the unsolicited endorsement of your personal solution. good to hear that it has absolutely no issues with extensions made for firefox. which librewolf was forked from… so why wouldn’t they? is getting in a one way shouting match meant to convince people to convert to another browser?
my statement was intended as invitation for someone to provide an argument as to how the actual addition to firefox is not privacy respecting, like the actual inner workings of it. not assumptions about its creators or their motives or the method of its introduction or how the nefarious villians behind such great injustice must be burned at the stake. not the far reaching ramifications it might lead to. what is it doing that makes one persons personal privacy specifically affected?
And keep an eye on the Ladybird browser, eventually FF forks will die should FF go full-tilt enshittification, but hopefully not till Ladybird is fully ready